


Desperate Measures

by Kichi (sentanixiv)



Series: Chasing The Fix [1]
Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: And can't seem to get either, Arthur is the designated waker?, Being brothers (snarking), Brothers, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, John is sleep drunk, John needs sleep or coffee, Pre-Canon, Sleep Deprivation, Sleep/Comfort, This is the fault of helvel, does that count?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:00:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27890416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sentanixiv/pseuds/Kichi
Summary: Two days and more on the run from the law's left John exhausted and in desperate need of coffee. Set shortly before the Blackwater heist.-“The hell’s wrong with you?” Arthur growled, holding fast to the reins and reaching for the bridle as Old Boy tossed his head, unsettled by the sudden shift. He calmed the horse some, murmuring to it as his eyes are bright and angry, watching John.“Nothing,” he tossed back defensively and maybe the sound of the word tripped up on his tongue some and didn’t come out quite sensible-like. John got himself closer to upright, held his head straight and mostly proud, and reached to untie his bedroll. Then he stopped, realizing that if Javier was gone, they’d be expected to head out again and that meant no sleep, just more fucking riding. “Shit,” he muttered as he leaned his head against the saddle, ready to claim that for a pillow if he could just sleep a few hours. He’d stand there to do it, swear to god, just let him.
Series: Chasing The Fix [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2106903
Comments: 13
Kudos: 21





	Desperate Measures

**Author's Note:**

  * For [helvel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvel/gifts).



They’d been hitting stagecoaches north of the Upper Montana for three weeks now and while they weren’t the richest of takes, they’d never been expected to be. The constant needling of the law-abiding folk turned sour the sheriff of some mountain hick town called Strawberry and had him calling in Ike’s boys off the plains to see an end to the harassment and the hold-ups before word got out that Big Valley were full on lawless. That sort of reputation would put an end to the mayor’s push for Strawberry to be something _civilized_ instead of rampant with ill-advised robberies that no one could predict.

No one, except maybe the van der Linde boys.

The whole string of stagecoach jobs were part of the plan crafted careful by Dutch to lure eyes and guns north of the river and away from Blackwater before his grand theft ferry and Hosea’s refined scams came together to see them all rich enough to buy out their bounties and ride west.

To finally fucking stop chasing riches that don’t manifest more often than not.

John didn’t know what he’d do, being that flush with cash, but that turned out to be less of the immediate problem when their string of hold-ups worked too damn well and brought down half the deputies of Strawberry, plus bought up half the bounty hunters of West Elizabeth to roam the roads and ruin their dishonest work. Three of them dispatched to hassle the stagelines weren’t enough to stem the tide when over a dozen guns showed at the fourth stage that week and they cut their losses, bolted out of the area and started the familiar cat’n’mouse chase to shake off pursuit before they could head back over the river.

Law’d come too close and with eyes too sharp to risk making any camp with the comfort of a fire. That’d normally be fine for most everything, but it’d been two days now that they’d been hounded and John wanted for warmth, coffee, and the ability to at least heat up a can of beans in the fireside over eating them cold in the dark. Ain’t seen hide nor hair of Arthur nor Javier since they split off thirty-six odd hours before to fray the thread of their trail from tracking eyes, but figured they’d be in about the same miserable state.

The other thing John wanted for were some hiding place that ain’t left him tucked into what’s more crevice than cave, resounding with the kind of damp cold that bypassed leather’s protection and wool’s warmth to creep straight into the bones and stay there no matter how much he hunched under Old Boy’s saddle blanket. The rest of his tack rested behind him, the horse loosed to run free over risking slipping a shoe or, worse, trying to fit into the cramped, low-clearance caves that were scattered around this part of Big Valley.

Irate best fit his mood right then and after two days without sleep, there weren’t much hope of him greeting the dawn with a sunny disposition. He ain’t never slept well before a job anyhow, so his ledger’d started in a red marked deep over three weeks of stagecoaches planned, waylaid, and beset upon anew. Then it all come down on them like a hornet’s nest of bounty hunters out of the south and deputies dispatched out of Strawberry and there ain’t been time to sleep between ducking, running, and the occasional gunning to keep his hide intact.

Crouched to keep from banging his head on the low-slung ceiling, John listened more than watched while the day stretched on. The racket of shouting and the rolling thunder of hooves that signalled the heavy-handed reach of a posse ain’t sounded much since that morning, so hope’d started to kindle that he might be able to get out of this godforsaken nook come nightfall and head up to the rendezvous. Being that he still sat too close to the road, he couldn’t risk lowering his guard by catching five or ten winks, much less the forty and more he required to start feeling human again. The last thing he needed was the law stumbling in on him asleep, then relieving of him of the take and his damn liberty like one of them two-birds, one-stone deals Hosea taught him and Arthur about.

None of that logic nor sense stopped his eyelids from hanging heavy, doing their best to seal out the light and lure him into slumber. John pushed aside the too-long strands of his hair and pinched the side of his neck hard, the sharp and focused pain a reluctantly learned trick to staying awake. He’d picked it up after a half dozen times Arthur come up on him when he’d been dozing during guard duty and pinched that tender bit of skin where his neck met his shoulder and _damn_ could that wake the dead.

Better still would be a cup of coffee and he’d murder for even a cold cup of it, over-brewed and left stale for two days under the grease pit of Pearson’s wagon where the dead things went to rot. And hell, but it’d taste like ambrosia far as he was concerned so long as it had at least a measure of caffeine still in it.

-

Five cold and awake hours later found John approaching the coffee conundrum from a different angle; one that’d get coffee _in_ him, don’t matter how, because he felt _that_ damn tired and needed something to perk him up. Sometime after an hour of near silence and deafening temptation to risk a blaze, the thought occurred to him that maybe getting caught sparking a fire to make himself some coffee’d be worth being strung up by the law’s wrath.

The sarcasm died hard and fast in his chest, the phantom sensation of a rope around his neck enough to make the worn scars burn like they were fresh and bloody, not etched in old memories of a panicked, angry kid being dragged towards death’s door kicking and screaming.

John served to cut his own mood short by three notches after that, sour and bitter like the coffee he wanted to be drinking right then.

-

Couple hours after the stupidly sobering thought of going to the noose for his fix had John fetch one of the tins of ground coffee from his saddlebags and stare at it. Thought that maybe if he willed it hard enough, it’d turn into a pot of hot, freshly brewed joe that he felt ready to bathe in if it’d but appear.

The tin stared back at him, unimpressed by his lack of imagination in convincing it that he needed the percolated form of it.

_Christ._

He’d just figured the tin had an opinion about him and if that didn’t say he had a polarized sort of problem between wanting sleep and needing to be awake, then nothing damn well would.

Desperate times being what they were, he decided to test a pinch of the grounds in his mouth and pray that it’d serve to tide him over. John near gagged on the bitter flavour, quick to spit it out next to his boot in the close confines of the crevice and fuck if he didn’t regret _that_ an instant later because that wasted perfectly good (potential) coffee.

_Shit._

John leaned his head back and saw the long shadows stretched out just beyond his little hideaway, the light casting shades of orange and red that told him the sun’d made its way down towards the ground and would disappear into the night soon. Reflected on that a moment instead of the coffee, thought on the lack of noise the past few hours and the risk that’d come with stepping out of this safe, if a literal pain in the ass, location.

Should be good to move out after dark, he figured; quiet as it’d been since morning, seemed that the heat had passed and he could make a ride for it. That’d give him about a day left to make it to the rendezvous, some shitty old shack hid in the rolling forests and craggy hills, before he’d be called overdue and left behind. John decided he’d whistle for Old Boy once the sun’d given up its last rays of light, saddle him, then see how far he could make it without alerting the law of his escape.

-

Moon rose high in a cloudless sky, waned nearest to new and hard to see by; suited John just fine because it meant others would be as hard-pressed to see him as he felt hard-pressed to not be seen. Old Boy’d returned at the first whistle and then waited patiently as the saddle went back in place, his tack secured, and his good behaviour rewarded with a carrot, slightly crushed from too much time in the saddlebag.

John rode hunched over and low in the saddle, an attempt to keep his profile narrow and unnoticeable. With effort, he ignored the calming, lulling sway of Old Boy’s gait best he could, eyelids heavy and drooping down without warning every few minutes even without that soothing tempo.

The tin of ground coffee’d found its way back into his hands and the vicious teacher called trial and error learned him that tucking one or two pinches of the grind under his tongue or in the hollow of his cheek turned out a passably awful way to get something akin to coffee in him. With some effort, he could get bits of bitter, almost-coffee from its blending with his spit and that left him free to imagine that the boon of caffeine came with each swallow of it. The whole mess came off like some demented chewing tobacco and it honestly served as the only thing that’d kept him going for the few hours. That would _keep_ him going through the night as Old Boy plodded along.

John hated the sour taste of it, but life ain’t living for an outlaw when it ain’t rife with discomfort. That’s something else he’s learned by that same trial and error, more the latter than the former.

-

Law must’ve let up some time past, the way he’d thought, and John breathed a sigh of relief when he overheard a couple fellas riding past him say that they’d turned their focus westwards and that serve him fine. Westwards meant O’Driscoll territory and about the only thing worth sitting in that cramped excuse of a cave for almost two days turned out to be the idea of Colm’s boys tangling with bounty hunters and law out looking for Dutch’s boys. The lot of them deserved each other, stupid bastards.

John turned north after he heard that; the route’d take some bit longer, but the further he put between himself and prying eyes, the better. That he didn’t trust himself to see straight and spy trouble before it crashed into him factored some into it, forget about shooting along the same straight lines. Old Boy had a reliable nature, able to follow trails and paths so all John had to do was decide which direction to take whenever it forked and the horse took care of the rest. That allowed him to drift in and out of focused awareness throughout the night and most of the next day.

Damn near overdue their three-day deadline when he finally rode into the clearing and eyed the battered shack central to it. Sun’d been up and gone again with the roundabout routes he took to keep folk from noticing him and there weren’t much to see in the new moon darkness of this night. Didn’t much matter to him no more; didn’t much care to be concerned. He’d run out of coffee tins some hours back and the slight edge they’d given him had long faded. John’d even rinsed out the last gritty bits with the last of his canteen’s water and put solid thought into bringing a flask what had cold, _brewed_ coffee next time to avoid this.

Heard someone call challenge as he rode in and John grumbled out that it was only him, but he reined in Old Boy and waited to be certain that the duty guard didn’t up and shoot him.

Arthur stepped out from the shadowed profile of the shack, where he’d been concealed and able to keep an eye on the sole trail what approached their rendezvous point. The repeater in his hands seemed more like a natural extension of the man and John supposed, with how lethal Arthur turned when fighting come up, that it weren’t far from accurate. His eyes were dark, annoyed and deepened to a rich cobalt that he could just make out from the low glow of the lantern set on the shack’s dilapidated step. Old and familiar, this; a sign they used to show it safe, that at least one of them were around to be found.

Their territory.

“You’re goddamn late, Marston,” Arthur growled as he pushed the repeater’s strap back over his shoulder. Must’ve figured something to be up by the fact he walked up and took a firm grip on Old Boy’s bridle to steady the horse so no one else had to.

John let the reins drop where they could be grabbed, grateful, and met the derision with an irate look. “I ain’t late,” he argued. “Midnight’s deadline, right?”

“Sure,” Arthur drawled, slowing it down like he needed to make it clearer, keep it steady for the village idiot, all the while patting Old Boy’s neck, gentle and caring for the horse and never the rider. “Then why’s it half past three, dumbass?”

John squinted at him. “Shit, really?” asked like it don’t make sense and that’s because it don’t. Not really. John dug out his battered pocket watch and stared at it, the hands lodged and locked at quarter past eleven. He lifted it up near his ear and there came no telltale ticking of it working, winding wound full out sometime earlier. He dropped his hand and let out a frustrated breath. “Why’s you still here then?” he grumbled. They all should’ve ridden out at midnight, same the plan went every time, and he’d’ve caught up later, caught shit for it, and then they’d move on like it were nothing. Same as always, except here it ain’t.

“Sent Javier back to camp to let Dutch know we done what he wanted.” Arthur took the reins, leading Old Boy back behind the shed to where Boadicea’s hitched while John’s still in the saddle and leaning further and further aside the longer he sat there. “Figured you’d waltz in late, golden boy,” added with the same bitter anger that’d shaded them since John come back to the gang and he were too damn tired to bitch about it.

“Whatever you say,” is the shot he gave instead, the expected sarcasm doled out in equal dose. John shook his head and then his hand almost slipped from the saddle horn as he dismounted. The near miss threw his balance off, stumbling him back a step as he cursed.

“The hell’s wrong with you?” Arthur growled, holding fast to the reins and reaching for the bridle as Old Boy tossed his head, unsettled by the sudden shift. He calmed the horse some, murmuring to it as his eyes are bright and angry, watching John.

“Nothing,” he tossed back defensively and maybe the sound of the word tripped up on his tongue some and didn’t come out quite sensible-like. John got himself closer to upright, held his head straight and mostly proud, and reached to untie his bedroll. Then he stopped, realising that if Javier was gone, they’d be expected to head out again and that meant no sleep, just more fucking riding. “Shit,” he muttered as he leaned his head against the saddle, ready to claim that for a pillow if he could just sleep a few hours. He’d stand there to do it, swear to god, just _let_ him.

“You drunk or something?” Sure sounded like Arthur’s abysmal opinion of him just struck an all-time low and he felt the man’s iron grip clamp hard over his bicep, shaking it, then forcing him to turn towards him.

“No,” John muttered, shaking off the grip best he could. He shifted his face away from the leather, rested his cheek on it instead, and tried to figure out what he needed to do next. “Just tired is all,” he added and the words came out slurred together.

Arthur’s brow furrowed, suspicion roused. “The hell have you got to be tired about?” he pressed. Pulled him upright just as John’d closed his eyes a brief second, then pushed him away from Old Boy, who’d dancing to the side at the arguing, the imbalanced energy being shot off. “Waltzing in here after three days and we’d been looking out for where you went the whole damn time and _you’re_ tired?”

“Three days.” John groaned and felt the full weight of that time awake come down hard and heavy on his shoulders. “Fuck. That’s how long it’s been?”

“How long what’s been? You being drunk like a goddamn idiot?” Arthur moved to hitch Old Boy, care shown in the action in contrast to the coarse grit thrown at John.

“S’how long I been awake, jackass,” he grumbled, pushing his hair out of his eyes. Only his hat sat there and that stopped it. And now he’d knocked his goddamn hat _off_ and it lay on the goddamn ground. “Shit.”

That at least killed the high-and-mighty righteous anger and Arthur turned away, looping the reins to a secure hitch, his voice less rough when he spoke up next. “Why ain’t you pitched camp somewhere along then?”

John fished his hat off the ground after a missed swipe, then dusted off the rim and the lining. “Got penned in by the law,” he muttered. “South of that shit job. Had to turn Old Boy loose a couple days to get them off my trail, confuse them ‘cause they’d follow him and find no rider.” He managed to put the hat on and shit if it ain’t backwards and shit if he don’t care no more, just stood there and glared tiredly at Arthur. “Holed up in this shitty little crag until they all passed, but weren’t safe for no fire. Damn near got spotted the couple times I stepped out to take a piss.” He started getting heated about it now, frustrated that Arthur of all folk was the one he had to regale with his _ineptitude_ over not riding out fast enough. That Arthur’ll get to walk out of this with loads more ammunition to feed his derisive rants about how stupid and selfish John’s turned out to be and can’t even take a piss without the law tripping over him. And he knew that Arthur’d scowl and he knew what he’d berate him with, so John kept going at full tilt because maybe that’d stall the lecture some and then that’d be worth it. “What the hell’s else was I supposed to do? You headed east, Javier went south, and west’s where I heard a bunch of O’Driscolls are holed up at, so like hell I’m going to ride that way and hope they’ll trip up over themselves to give me asylum. So, sure. What I did was stupid, but it managed to confuse the law and that kept ‘em looped in one spot and not all over West Elizabeth so whatever.” He’d been gesturing directions and threw up his hands at the end, giving up. “It worked anyways except I ain’t slept and just give me the damn reins back and we can ride out and let Dutch know there’s plenty of attention up north so he can pull off the job just fine.”

Somehow, he’d expected to be given back the reins to his horse for all that riding’s the last thing he wanted to do right then; about then, he got busy thinking that maybe he could steal some coffee from Arthur just to make the ride back to their main camp west of Blackwater and then he could sleep this off until the ferry was due in.

Problem being, there ain’t no reins slapped into his outstretched hand.

John felt it hit his chest and it drove the air out of him, but his hands grabbed the bedroll instinctively even as he glared at Arthur for throwing it square at him, no warning.

“What the hell, Arthur?!”

“Get your ass inside.” Arthur jerked his head towards the shack, kept his focus on settling Old Boy in. “I told Javier I’d stick it here two more days ‘fore I gave you up for stupid, so we ain’t needed back yet.”

John stared at him like he’d gone dumb, using that shit excuse for sticking around. Arthur’d held back at the shack on the chance he’d show and the right bastard could really be a right bastard, but the hell? That kind of protective oversight’s a throwback to before, when they was more acting like brothers and watching out for each other, not this stretch of petty shit that’s come between them. The dichotomy sat there, hard for him to figure on.

The snap of fingers made him blink back awake, still clutching the bedroll, still processing what’d happened. “What?” he asked, irritated.

Arthur turned from his horse, rolled his eyes, and then forced John to turn around by putting his hands on his shoulders. “I _said_ , get inside. We’ll ride out morning after today. I ain’t keen on having to keep you from falling off your horse like a goddamn idiot every time you fall asleep.”

The tone’d come off softer, not as abrasive as the words ought have been said in and John don’t got the full sense to complain when all he wanted to do is collapse right there and have someone wake him for the end of days and only if that happened _after_ he’d slept a straight ten hours. Maybe twenty.

Which’d be how he ended up stumbling into the shack, herded in by Arthur, and fumbling open his bedroll to shake it out messily on the floor. John then just fell face first on it, in full gear, boots, hat rolled off to the side and damn did Arthur grumble about his fool stupidity but he fell asleep before it some smartass retort could manifest.

-

John woke up sometime after the sun’d risen and heated the day, closer to when it’d track down back into the horizon for the next night. He felt warm and comfortable and still tired, but ain’t felt like he were ready to pass out from it and that came as improvement.

Took him a bit to register that he’d gone from atop the crumpled mess of his bedroll to wrapped in it and he felt the scratching wool lining of Arthur’s bedroll rested atop it and tucked up over him, rubbing coarse felting along the line of his jaw when he shifted. Flexed his toes and felt them free of his boots. Added to that, he didn’t have a sore hip from sleeping with his belts and holsters fastened; realized that Arthur must’ve gone and stripped his gear, made sure he weren’t about to wake from the first drafty breeze or irritating press of a gun at his side.

The tolerable part, though, came when he lifted his head and caught sight of his tin mug, dented and scratched from countless pointless tussles with Arthur over the years. It sat there and he could see the dark draw of coffee, steam gently drifting away from that sacrilegious offering and it had him groggily sit up. John kept the bedding wrapped as much as he could around him while he picked up the mug. He took a long, grateful drink and almost hummed because that is how much he appreciated it after two days of sucking grinds to keep alert. “S’good,” was how he eloquently showed it, ever loquacious.

Arthur sat on the far side of the shack, opposite the rough stone fireplace, with his journal open in one hand, pencil held in the other and making short movements over the paper. The distracted ‘hm’ he gave served as greeting and acknowledgement both. That made him lucky that he didn’t start off on him anew now that he’d had some hours rest.

“Sure beats tryin’ to eat it,” John muttered, cradling the mug in his hands and inhaling slow the long-craved scent of actual. Brewed. Coffee.

“Sure— _what_?” Arthur’s tone came up sudden and sharp, his gaze the same as he looked over. “When you’d eat coffee?” Said like that’d been the stupidest thing he’d heard in ages and that had to be saying something, given his present company. “Pearson’s shit ain’t even that bad. Drinkable, barely, but you ain’t got to chew it.”

That immediate defensive pitch knotted tight in his shoulders and John scowled. “How else was I gonna get any to stay awake?” he shot back, possessively huddled around the remains of it in his mug. “Couldn’t make no fire up without drawing eyes. Had to do something.”

Arthur just stared at him a minute and let out a long, low breath as the sense of it settled with a sour, impatient tang. “Marston, sometime’s you’s almost brilliant,” he grumbled, pinching his nose, a focus to keep from lashing out. “Then you go and talk about eating coffee raw and all you are is a goddamn idiot.”

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Don't eat coffee grinds. It not tasty.
> 
> This fic's dedicated to [helvel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/helvel/pseuds/helvel) because they have fantastic positive energy. They may not have realized it then, but they inspired me to take this haphazard prompt of "John eating coffee beans" from my slush file and make a one-shot of it during a week when I really needed to have an open-and-shut story to feel productive.
> 
> Also, they write fantastic Pornston (Morston smut), so check out their offerings.
> 
> Cheers to you, friend!
> 
> \- Kichi @[KichiWhy](https://twitter.com/KichiWhy) (Twitter)
> 
> P.S. A Sinful Mercy's weekly update is still set for Sunday! Only been a weird week and my biochemistry's off, but I got it all sorted.
> 
> P.P.S. Tweaked some tenses, corrected some outright errors. Kept Old Boy, even though we know John rode a different horse in Blackwater; I tend to figure that the gang'd been doing well pre-Blackwater, with numbers enough. Not that odd to consider one of the point gunmen of the crew to have more than one horse available to him.


End file.
